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One of the best ways to prevent a heart attack is to prevent heart disease. Heart disease, which is quite common, can often be prevented by doing things like controlling your blood pressure, lowering your cholesterol, losing weight, and staying active.
These tips can help you reduce your risk of a heart attack:
Eat a Balanced, Healthy Diet
Improving your diet is one of the most effective ways to reduce your risk of a heart attack. Instead of mourning foods that aren’t heart-healthy, turn your attention to all the delicious things that are good for you: fruits, veggies, whole grains and fatty fish.
Maintaining a healthy weight and exercising regularly can also help prevent a heart attack.
Quit Smoking
Smoking can cause more than just lung cancer and gum disease. It also increases your risk of heart disease. In fact, 1 out of 5 heart disease deaths is a result of smoking.
The nicotine in smoke reduces the amount of oxygen sent to your heart, raises your blood pressure, increases your heart rate, damages blood vessels and increases the likelihood of dangerous blood clots. For women, these risks are increased if you take hormonal birth control pills.
Talk to your doctor about the many different ways people are successfully quitting smoking. He or she can recommend some options that may work for you.
Manage Your Diabetes
Excess blood sugar can cause damage to your arteries, so it is vital to keep diabetes in check. If you are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, talk to your physician about what you can do to prevent its onset. If you’ve already been diagnosed, do everything you can to keep your condition under control. Since the signs and symptoms of diabetes are not always obvious, it’s important to see your doctor for annual physicals.
Monitor Your Blood Pressure
High blood pressure can lead to heart disease and heart attack, so keeping it under control is extremely important. A healthy diet, regular exercise and better stress management are sometimes enough to maintain optimal blood pressure, but not always. Your doctor may need to prescribe medication to keep your blood pressure within a healthy range.
Keep Tabs on Cholesterol
Too much cholesterol in your blood can lead to clogged arteries, which increases the risk for heart attack. To combat high cholesterol, doctors will often recommend lifestyle changes and, sometimes, medication.
There are many things that can reduce the risk of a heart attack. Luckily, researchers are also looking into ways to prevent heart disease. There is promising research that indicates that one day, klotho therapy may help prevent the onset of both diabetes and heart attacks.
If you have questions about your risk of developing heart disease or other conditions that increase the risk of heart attack, talk to your doctor.
2 https://www.webmd.com/